Several years ago, the expression "slow food" entered in the vocabulary of the Japanese and has ever since been increasingly used on TV programs, in newspaper and magazine articles, and in various other media. Books featuring "slow food" have also been printed in greater numbers.

The expression "slow food" originated in Slow Food movement, a Non-Profit Operation (NPO), which began in 1986 in Bra, Italy. The movement aims for the opposite of "fast food," seeking to find in culinary traditions what has been lost in today’s world of puting higher priority on efficiency and economic growth. Slow Food dismisses today’s standardized fast food and other mass-marketed foodstuffs, and seeks culinary ingredients and recipes that are traditional and local.

The 20th century was characterized as a century of industrialization, insatiably seeking productivity and efficiency. True to this trend, Japan relied heavily on imports for domestic food supply as they were cultivated on a greater scale and thus were cheaper. As a result, Japan’s food self-sufficiency ratio has dropped below 40%.

In the past couple of years, Japan was hit one after another by various food-related incidences, including mass poisoning by O-157 Escherichia coli, outbreak of mad-cow disease, and erroneous labeling of producing regions on food packages by leading food processors. This may be one of the reasons for the growing popularity of "slow food" here, prompting the Japanese people to realize what has been lost in the quest for productivity and efficiency, including the values now represented by the Slow Food movement.